Saturday, May 3, 2014

A demonstration by a pro-gun group in Ft. Worth, TX sent restaurant employees at a Jack in the Box location fleeing into the freezer as police responded to the scene thinking a robbery was in progress.

According to Dallas-Ft. Worth’s NBC Channel 5, Open Carry Texas protesters are irate that police treated them like criminals for staging a heavily armed protest without notifying authorities and without visible signs stating the purpose of the demonstration.

Sgt. Ray Bush of the Ft. Worth Police Department told Channel 5 that officers received a call Thursday night from employees of the restaurant who thought that the large group of heavily armed white men had come to rob them.

“They locked themselves inside a freezer for protection out of fear the rifle-carrying men would rob them,” Bush said via email. “The demonstration had no signage that would have alerted anyone to their real purpose, and to our knowledge they did not attempt to contact anyone in the Fort Worth Police Department to advise us prior to the demonstration.”

And as any open carry advocate will tell you, this is the entire point of open carry laws: I can exercise my Second Amendment rights anywhere I choose to. And no, these wonderful patriots really see themselves as the aggrieved party here.

The department responded as it would to any armed robbery in progress, with multiple police cruisers and officers carrying tactical weapons. Demonstrators say that the aggressive response by law enforcement was unnecessary.

“I’m upset that that many officers had to arrive on the scene,” demonstrator Edwin Haros said. “I would estimate around 10 squad cars showed up, some with two per squad car. I believe we counted more than 15 officers showed up on scene.”

Haros is an Open Carry Texas member who believes it is his right to carry his Smith and Wesson semi-automatic rifle with him at all times and in all situations.

The constitution says I have the right to terrify the hell out of you with an armed group of people ready to use deadly force at a moment's notice in self-defense. Cool.

Exit questions: Would you feel safe at a fast food restaurant with your kids and family when a dozen visibly armed guys came in and sat down? Would your answer be the same if the armed men in question were all say, black or Latino?

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has backed out of delivering the commencement address at Rutgers University following protests by some faculty and students over her role in the Iraq War.

Rice said in a statement Saturday that she informed Rutgers President Robert Barchi that she was declining the invitation to speak at the graduation.

"Commencement should be a time of joyous celebration for the graduates and their families," Rice said. "Rutgers' invitation to me to speak has become a distraction for the university community at this very special time."

The school's board of governors had voted to pay $35,000 to the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony. Rutgers was also planning to bestow Rice with an honorary doctorate.

But some students and faculty at New Jersey's flagship university had protested, staging sit-ins and saying Rice bore some responsibility for the Iraq War as a member of the Bush administration. Barchi and other school leaders had resisted the calls to disinvite Rice, saying the university welcomes open discourse on controversial topics.

It's not "open discourse" over someone's place in history when you pay somebody $35,000 to speak at your commencement and plan to give them an honorary doctorate, it's complete acceptance of them as a hero and holding that person up as a living example of someone you want your students to be.

The students of Rutgers disagreed with that assessment of Condi Rice, as apparently unlike the school's board of governors, they still have a functioning moral center. Frankly, the faculty and administration should be proud that the students told Condi to go screw herself. It means that the students are smart kids who will more likely than not become better people that the board of governors.

And yes, Condi should be rotting in a cell along with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Dubya.

It turns out that Republicans will actually get to vote on that now this weekend, and now that it's had some time to sink in that the party will be voting on what is essentially the right to reserve planned treason at some later date, they can't run from it fast enough.

“This has been totally blown out of proportion,” said Michael Murphy, vice chairman of the 4th District Republican Party and a former chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a Ron Paul-affiliated outlet. “This is one sentence in one resolution out of 23 that were passed, it is one tag line out of a larger resolution discussing state sovereignty. At no point are we going to the convention and debate that we want to secede from the union, even though some paint that as the case.”

To be clear, the text of the resolution reads, in full, “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we strongly insist our state representatives work to uphold Wisconsin’s 10th Amendment rights, and our right to secede, passing legislation affirming this to the US Federal Government.”

“We should remove it. Nobody wants to secede from the union,” said Todd Welch, chairman of the libertarian-leaning Wisconsin Campaign for Liberty and a member of the Republican Party. “Obviously, it is an option, but nobody wants to do that. We should focus on the real issues of stopping Obamacare, stopping Common Core, protecting gun rights.”

Wisconsin Republicans say they are not exactly sure how the resolution got through the caucus to begin with. “It was stuck in there by somebody, and nobody seems to know who,” said Welch. There was, they acknowledge, a states’ rights fervor in the air at their meeting, with the caucus voting to censure two state lawmakers who support the Common Core educational reforms and calling on them to resign from their position on the legislature’s education committee.

So these idiots are now shuffling their feet going "Well, secession of course is still an option but nobody would ever actually do it and all" and trying to have it both ways. Worse, nobody seems to know the identity of the brave, brave patriot who suggested this in the first place.

And the state of Wisconsin should elect these clowns in November?

I'm betting this vote is actually going to be a lot closer than people think it will be. And that should scare the hell out of all of us.

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With Republicans controlling the House and Senate and the Trump Regime now in charge of the Executive, there's still a crumbling global economy imperiling the world, rising nationalism and deadly racism across Europe and Asia, a seemingly endless war against terror, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day.

Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there when we need solutions. Dangerous levels of Stupid.

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